San Diego, June 22, 2026 — Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced the 15 shortlisted startups selected to advance in the Qualcomm® AI Program for Innovators (QAIPI) 2026, recognising startups developing next-generation AI solutions across industries. Representing Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, the selected teams were recognised for their innovative AI technologies and solutions to address real-world challenges across industries. The shortlisted startups will advance to the program’s Mentorship Phase and showcase their AI innovations at a Demo Day planned for later this year.

A program built for edge AI

QAIPI 2026 empowers startups across the Asia-Pacific region to develop scalable edge AI solutions using Qualcomm® platforms. Participants will gain access to advanced development tools, including Qualcomm Dragonwing and Snapdragon® platforms, and the new Arduino® UNO Q development board. Participants can also leverage the Qualcomm® AI Hub, technical resources, training, and mentorship to build optimised end-to-end AI use cases across mobile, compute, and IoT.

The fields they’re working in

The 15 shortlisted teams are developing AI solutions across a wide range of fields, including aerospace, agriculture, drones, healthcare, robotics, smart infrastructure, and smart industry. These fields reflect the growing demand for real-time, power-efficient AI at the edge, as well as physical AI systems that connect intelligent computing with real-world environments. The selected startups are (in alphabetical order):

• Japan: APTO, Inc., KanjuTech Kabushiki Kaisha, KimPax, MY ROBOTS K.K., XNOVA Inc.
• Singapore: AIPLUX TECHNOLOGY, QuikBot Technologies, RED DOT DRONE PTE. LTD., Refined Robotics, Zebrid Pte. Ltd.
• South Korea: CLIKA, ENERZAi Inc., Plaid Labs Inc., Undermilli Inc., WITHROBOT Inc.

 

Also Read: Qualcomm expands AI R&D with acquisition of MovianAI from Vietnam’s Vingroup

What the shortlisted startups receive

Over the next six months, the selected startups will participate in the Mentorship Phase, during which they will receive tailored support from Qualcomm Technologies. This includes 1:1 mentorship with Qualcomm subject matter experts, access to a hardware development platform based on products of Qualcomm Technologies and/or its affiliates, up to US$2,500 support for product development, and eligibility for a patent filing incentive of up to the equivalent of US$5,000. Startups that successfully complete the program will receive a grant of up to US$10,000. The program will culminate with a Demo Day in Q4 2026, where the startups will present their AI solutions to industry leaders, system integrators and investors to enhance visibility and support their future business success.

What Qualcomm’s leaders say

“We are pleased to once again support high-potential startups across the Asia-Pacific region through QAIPI this year,” said O.H. Kwon, Senior Vice President & President, Qualcomm APAC. “2026 is the year of AI agents, powered by a highly connected and distributed computing environment. Spanning across devices, edge systems, and the cloud, these agentic experiences embody the shift toward what Qualcomm defines as a unified compute continuum. As AI technologies continue to advance rapidly, the Asia-Pacific region’s hardware and software capabilities have become even more critical to the global technology landscape. The momentum of the startup ecosystem is a key force in driving the next wave of technological progress. This year’s shortlisted startups demonstrate the growing relevance of edge AI across practical industry use cases. Through QAIPI, Qualcomm aims to help these companies accelerate the path from technology development to commercialisation, while further strengthening the startup ecosystem across APAC.”

“In the second year of QAIPI across Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, we are seeing AI move decisively from prototypes to deployed infrastructure,” said Sudeepto Roy, Vice President of Engineering, Qualcomm Incorporated, and Lead of Qualcomm’s Global Ecosystem Development Program. “Selected from over 100 applications, this cohort stands out for its use of agentic AI and edge intelligence built for the physical world, spanning robotics and healthcare to drones, industrial safety, smart infrastructure, and secure multilingual workflows. Through QAIPI, Qualcomm is proud to provide equity-free mentorship, advanced platforms, product guidance, and patent incentives that help these teams turn promising prototypes into scalable, protected products.”

 

Meet the 2026 cohort

The 15 shortlisted teams are working on a diverse range of applications including smart healthcare, robotics, retail, audio, and transportation, each responding to urgent, localised challenges across Asia. These innovations reflect the growing demand for real-time, power-efficient AI at the on-device level. From Japan’s drive to humanise robotics and decarbonise maritime logistics, to Singapore’s multilingual AI and maternal health tech, to South Korea’s push for hyper-personalised, federated AI — these startups exemplify how regional needs are shaping globally relevant solutions.

Japan: Facing labour shortages and knowledge gaps driven by demographic change, Japan is exploring the potential of Physical AI and Edge AI to transform industrial systems, preserve human expertise, and advance real-world AI applications.

• APTO, Inc. (株式会社APTO) — An AI data company providing high-quality multimodal datasets and data operations solutions that help enterprises build, train, and deploy reliable AI systems at scale.
• KanjuTech KK (KanjuTech株式会社) — Builds brain-inspired adaptive AI for physical systems, helping machines learn on-device and remain reliable as real-world conditions change.
• KimPax Inc. (KimPax株式会社) — Transforms master farmer expertise into trusted digital knowledge assets that help farmers reduce operational risk, improve profitability, and create premium agricultural value.
• MY ROBOTS K.K. (MY ROBOTS株式会社) — Builds physician-reviewed surgical knowledge infrastructure that turns surgical video and audio into reusable clinical knowledge for training and documentation.
• XNOVA Inc. (株式会社XNOVA) — A Japan-based physical AI startup building autonomous robotic systems for the construction industry through robotics, spatial intelligence, and edge AI technologies.

Singapore: As a garden city with highly connected urban and smart infrastructure, Singapore provides an ideal environment for real-world AI deployment. Startups from Singapore are showcasing innovations in Physical AI that interact with the physical world, alongside advancements in edge computing, offline AI, and data security, enabling intelligent solutions that operate efficiently and securely in real-world environments.

• Aiplux Technology Co., Pte. Ltd. — An AI infrastructure company delivering on-device multilingual IP intelligence, helping enterprises run secure, auditable patent and legal workflows while keeping sensitive data under control.
• QuikBot Technologies Pte Ltd — A Singapore-based physical AI infrastructure company. Its QuikSync platform connects, orchestrates, governs, and records robotic and smart infrastructure operations to power the future of smart cities.
• RED DOT DRONE PTE. LTD. — A drone software company specialising in remote and autonomous drone operations, enabling intelligent drone missions through cloud and edge technologies.
• Refined Robotics Pte Ltd. — Builds spatial and physical AI that allows legged robots to operate in unstructured real-world environments.
• Zebrid Pte. Ltd. — An AI-native deeptech company, Zebrid builds a trust layer for orbital compute through autonomous, radiation-resilient infrastructure that helps keep edge AI data trusted, recoverable, and mission-grade.

South Korea: Building on its strengths in industrial manufacturing and digital infrastructure, South Korea is advancing AI solutions that address model optimisation, energy-efficient computing, industrial safety, and real-time multilingual communication.

• CLIKA, Inc. (클리카) — Auto-compresses AI models into optimised versions for target devices, reducing memory, heat, and cost while enabling efficient edge deployment across diverse hardware platforms.
• ENERZAi Inc. (에너자이) — Delivers ternary audio and language AI, including STT, TTS, LLMs, and translation, with end-to-end expertise from model design to compiler optimisation to reduce memory and power consumption and boost inference speed.
• Plaid Labs Inc. (플래드랩스 주식회사) — Builds NUVION, an AI vision inspection solution for small manufacturers, using on-device AI and a subscription model to make quality automation affordable and easy to deploy.
• Undermilli Inc. (주식회사 언더밀리) — Builds Maloha, a real-time voice-to-voice interpretation AI that originated in healthcare and now serves broader industries, delivering on-device speech translation across 23 languages.
• WITHROBOT Inc. (위드로봇 주식회사) — Develops AI robots, algorithms, and edge boards for industrial safety, delivering automated multimodal monitoring solutions tailored for harsh environments.

For more information on the Qualcomm AI Program for Innovators, visit qualcomm.com.

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About Qualcomm

Qualcomm is a global computing leader at the center of the AI era, enabling intelligence to scale from the most personal devices to large-scale infrastructure. Building on more than four decades of innovation, we develop platforms and solutions that bring together advanced AI, high-performance low-power computing, and industry-leading connectivity — powering products and services used around the world. Snapdragon® platforms power consumer and personal computing experiences, while our Qualcomm Dragonwing and Qualcomm Dragonfly portfolios support enterprise, industrial, automotive, networking, and data center applications. At Qualcomm, we are engineering human progress.

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